Analysis of The Snowfall

Franz Werfel 1890 (Prague) – 1945 (Manhattan)



Oh the slow fall of snow,
Its unending blanketing swirl!
Yet my mind's eye was giving shape
To what couldn't be kept hidden,
That in the white drifts each fleck
Is known, weighed, counted.

Oh you spinning dancing flakes,
Your tiny souls and personalities
Withstand gravity, weightlessness, wind,
In your coming and going
I see your destinies glide down,
Which you begin, fulfill, begin . . .

This one falls soft and like wool,
The next is crystal and tenacious,
The third's a clenched fist of struggle.
Yet their white realm disperses by morning,
Thus one doesn't die from the rest,
And they dissolve into the purest drop shapes.

Oh the world's slow falling snow,
That race's dense, blanketing swirl!
It perishes and not one fate melts alone.
We melt, but we are left behind
When death, the way spring wind thaws, overtakes
Us drops and comes together home in the womb.


Scheme ABXXXX CXDEXX XXXEXX ABXDCX
Poetic Form
Metre 101111 10101001 11111101 11101110 1001111 11110 1110101 110100100 011001001 0110010 11110011 11010101 1111011 011100010 01011110 11111110 11101101 01010101011 1011101 11011001 110111101 11111101 110111110 11010101001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 854
Words 151
Sentences 11
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 171
Words per stanza (avg) 38
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 06, 2023

47 sec read
88

Franz Werfel

Franz Viktor Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. more…

All Franz Werfel poems | Franz Werfel Books

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